Gay Slurs? Eh, She’s Just Being Miley. Or Is She?

Twitter and the blogosphere are starting to go abuzz with a video shot at a Miley Cyrus concert in Kentucky. In it, the pop star replaces a lyric from one of her songs with a gay slur. Innocent mistake? Or yet another example of this girl’s innate prejudices?

This isn’t the first time that Cyrus has been accused of being discriminatory. Last February there were accusations that she was racist after a photo of her making “slanty-eyes” circulated, generating headlines in major news outlets. After apologizing for the photo, claiming that she was just making a “goofy face” and that the media had taken it out of context, the controversy died down and her career survived without so much as a scratch. It seems odd that Cyrus would stir the pot up again intentionally, and risk alienating part of her core demographic.

It hasn’t gone unnoticed that flippant use of the phrase “that’s so gay” runs rampant with American teenagers, even prompting celebrity-sponsored PSAs on the issue. Maybe the fact of the matter is that Miley is, at 16, just acting her age. And if she isn’t, and the phrase came out of her mouth unintentionally, then let’s at least hope she does a better job of apologizing to her gay fans who found this incident offensive than she did to her Asian fans who found that photo offensive.

What do you think? Does this seem like the kind of thing a pop star with a large gay following — who allegedly supports gay marriage — would do? Is this just another flub being taken out of context and being blown out of proportion? Or is the internet — or maybe the Gay Mafia and Hilary Duff? — conspiring against her?